Tibetan art and culture that has long been elusive comes to light under the spotlight of the new millennium after witnessing a recent turbulent history. The select nine artists’ works are distilled to showcase the impressions of fresh ideas, modern techniques and the new world, left on Tibetan artists of the New Tibetan order. Though the themes remain entwined with Buddhism, the artists’ approach serve as a cultural bridge between past and present.

Initial tours and exhibitions back home and across the globe swept up many awards and terrific appraise from critics and the art-loving public.

 

Tibet - the Land, its People, and their Painting
By Susan Croft

Background to the contemporary art of Tibet

For those who are not on or part of the ’Roof of the World’, Tibet is a mysterious land, an extreme terrain and climate, a pure untouched wilderness of crystalline lakes and soaring mountains beneath painfully clear blue skies, a territory that has still not been entirely explored and mapped. It is home to the highest mountain on earth – Qomolangma or, as it is better known outside, Everest – home to a particularly refined, spiritual form of Buddhism, home to a nomadic people who are as rugged and tough as the landscape they inhabit.

Partly because of its geographic remoteness and inaccessibility, partly because of its people’s corresponding self-sufficiency and suspicion of those beyond their fortress-like borders, partly for political reasons, Tibet, even today, is one of the least known places on earth. Much that is commonly known comes from the writings of early travelers and, in the minds of many outsiders, it is this traditional, possibly romanticized view of Tibet that still prevails. We have heard of the yaks, of the turquoise- and coral-encrusted jewellery, of the huge palatial monasteries, of the ubiquitous maroon-garbed lamas, of the prayer wheels and flags. We have seen reproductions of the exquisite and complex tangka religious paintings (and sometimes the real thing) and marvelled at grotesque masks of Tibetan deities, at vibrant bronze and clay sculptures, and at temple murals the purpose of which was to teach the people about the scriptures. Those who have looked further into this culture have come across the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which describes the consciousness between death and rebirth.

Descriptions and examples of these religious aspects of Tibetan culture are readily available to anyone who wishes to study them. Tibetologists have been studying them for over a century so, in libraries and bookstores, and on the Internet, a quick search will yield a large amount of information. But what of Tibet’s contemporary culture? What is known about the art that is being created now? How has Tibetan art evolved historically? Even an in-depth study will reveal little in the way of information or even references to what is happening today or of how contemporary art has developed.

That is why the Yisulang Art Gallery’s exhibition of contemporary Tibetan art is so important - and surprising. It is a rare event indeed, and one that will help to turn the spotlight onto a rich and hitherto unknown source of artistic expression.

 

This exhibition showcases the work of nine artists whose work finds its inspiration, subject-matter, techniques, and/or raw materials in Tibet. All of them have laid themselves open to the influences of Tibet, the land, its people, their religion, their culture and their art. Anyone who spends time in Tibet cannot fail to be struck by the way in which these elements combine to form a rich, strong life force that includes a keen spiritual awareness. This consciousness pervades people’s lives, as established religion as well as in terms of their world view. The simplicity and harshness of life in Tibet has forged a people with a vital sense of the wonder and fragility of existence, of the transient relativity of life and death, and of the natural and spiritual forces that define their world. Their experience of a land of extremes, and of sudden changes in terrain, climate and circumstances, that encompasses the mundane everyday routine as well as the unexplainable unpredictable fluctuations in fortune, makes the difference between reality and fantasy or the world of the spirits seem small.

The work of these artists is instinctively informed by such considerations because they constitute the atmosphere and energy field in which the painters lived and worked. However, the various members of this group also made a deliberate effort to obtain an intellectual and aesthetic understanding of Tibetan culture and art by undertaking wide-ranging, practical research. Not for them, the classical, narrow theology-based studies. Their investigations generally revealed a lack of secondary sources except in relation to religion, so they were obliged to conduct their own first-hand investigations. This they did in the 1980s and 1990s. With an open mind, they examined the texts, artefacts and art they found, the folk songs and dances, the folk art, as well as the religious art, and the stories that have been handed down the centuries, and analysed these items in the context of their own artistic background. Prior to this, the artists variously had been educated to develop a familiarity with different artistic traditions, both ancient and modern, Asian and western, so they were able to make a vast network of connections between Tibetan art and art outside Tibet. In addition to their scholarly appreciation, the artists individually cultivated a more emotional and psychological bond with Tibet and its culture, too, by extensive pilgrim-like wanderings in the valleys and mountains of this fantastic land in order to fill in the blanks in the aesthetic history of Tibetan art. They collected, sorted, classified and analysed the rich heritage they encountered, and then prepared to present it to the world. 

Susan Croft
21 May 2005

6 - 12 July 2005